We are deeply disappointed by yesterday’s government announcement of a £53 million support package aimed at tackling offenders, while once again failing to provide desperately needed funding for Black, minoritised and migrant victim-survivors of domestic abuse.
Women with No Recourse to Public Funds (NRPF) are three times more likely to experience violence against women and girls (VAWG). This immigration condition creates insurmountable barriers for Black, minoritised and migrant victim-survivors seeking safety—preventing them from reporting abuse, accessing support, or fleeing violence. It emboldens perpetrators and repeat offenders who weaponise the hostile environment—a system sustained by government policy—to trap, silence and harm women with insecure immigration status.
A focus on identified perpetrators relies heavily on reporting, which is significantly limited among migrant women with insecure immigration status—largely due to the absence of statutory entitlements that guarantee safety and support for those who come forward. But even Black and minoritised women with British citizenship face significant barriers to reporting, shaped by long-standing mistrust of statutory agencies, particularly the police, and fear of being dismissed, disbelieved, or criminalised. Any serious effort to hold perpetrators accountable must confront these structural inequalities that prevent all victim-survivors—regardless of immigration status—from being recognised, prioritised, and supported. Addressing these systemic barriers requires dedicated funding, especially for specialist ‘by and for’ services, to deliver meaningful social benefit and reduce long-term costs to the state.
And yet, despite this systemic failure to protect Black, minoritised and migrant women, the specialist, led ‘by and for’ services that support these women not only deliver life-saving work, but are estimated to save the government £42 million annually. We do more with less—but we cannot do it alone, nor should we have to.
To date, the government funding for the VAWG sector, specifically for victim-survivors, remains far below what is needed. For example, the widely acclaimed Support for Migrant Victims (SMV) scheme—the only national initiative of its kind—serves as a critical safety net but remains vastly under-resourced. While the Domestic Abuse Commissioner estimates that nearly 32,000 migrant victim-survivors require support, the scheme can only support approximately 475 women per year. This gap between need and provision has been further widened locally by the recent 4.2% core funding cut by the Ministry of Justice. As a result, vital projects like the London Holistic Advocacy Wrap Around Service (LHAWAS)—a unique and life-saving service for migrant women with NRPF—are being decommissioned. This amounts to the state withdrawing essential protection, leaving women at greater risk of harm, with no equivalent services to turn to.
The legal reforms we call for to address the gaping holes in the current framework of support are backed by our decades of expertise and research evidence. The Domestic Abuse Commissioner’s Office estimates that extending the combined Migrant Victims of Domestic Abuse Concession (which gives access to benefits), and the Domestic Violence Indefinite Leave to Remain rule (a pathway to regularising immigration status) will save the government £2 billion over a decade.
Despite the undeniable moral, fiscal and public safety case for investing in specialist ‘by and for services’—which are six times less likely to receive government funding—this government has yet again chosen to turn its back on Black, minoritised and migrant victim-survivors.
It is also our responsibility to flag that the programme announced today is likely to have extremely limited impact on Black, minoritised and migrant victim-survivors due to its failure to address the systemic barriers and lack of statutory entitlements that severely limit their ability to safely report perpetrators without fear of retribution or deportation.
While we recognise the importance of initiatives aimed at tackling offenders, these must be rolled out alongside large-scale, long-term investment in ‘by and for’ services—which have been brought to their knees by fifteen years of austerity, with several now facing decommissioning. Without this, we have deep concerns about the ability of these services to continue delivering the holistic, life-saving support urgently needed by thousands of victim-survivors across the country.
We call on the government to urgently adopt the following demands to ensure that Black, minoritised and migrant victim-survivors are not pushed through the cracks and that their mission to halve VAWG in a decade, which we wholeheartedly support, remains achievable:
